Surprise Arsenal opening for outcast Nicolas Pepe

Nicolas Pepe has played five minutes of Premier League football for Arsenal across the past seven fixtures. It’s hard to imagine where the next five will come from.

Finishing last season as arguably Arsenal’s best player with five goals in final three league outings, at last it felt like all the flirts with being a quality footballer would be realised with a long-term relationship in the first team.

Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe are the wide players considered undroppable, but it was hard to overlook the exploits of the club’s record signing as he gradually picked up his form across 2021.

Carry that over into pre-season where he looked sharp, hungry and in good physical condition, even in the dreadful 2-0 opening day defeat to Brentford there were some positive signs from the Ivorian. The following loss to Chelsea was miserable, but he was far from the worst player on the pitch.

Nicolas Pepe could be handed a surprise opening at Arsenal with Mikel Arteta making his feelings known on the outcast forward

And yet, 15 matches into the season, he has started only five games.

Only his most die hard supporters are looking at the ongoing issues at Arsenal and feeling some poor decisions are being made. Missing plenty from the performances, there is little to suggest that Pepe will fix any of them.

With a face like thunder at Everton as Eddie Nketiah was selected ahead of him to come on at left-winger when chasing a winner, the fact he wasn’t even asked to warm up speaks volumes of where he stands in Mikel Arteta’s thinking.

His career in north London looks well and truly over. Successive games where the Gunners have been searching for a goal he’s been left to watch on from the bench in favour of others with futures that may be elsewhere as soon as January. That’s a bad look for him. Whatever he’s contributing in training is far from the accepted standard.

Again, there are not any great qualms over that, even if he is painfully imperfect and one of few forwards in the squad who offers genuine goal threat regardless of how poor other aspects of his game may be.

You also wonder what the point was in bringing him up to the north west. It was clear at Old Trafford and Goodison Park that Arteta had no intention of subbing him on, even if in both instances the game state was the most ideal one for him to be considered.

Yet, with Southampton to come in the Premier League on Saturday, the situation may call for him to make a rare outing.

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